Hwy. 401 at Newtonville expected to re-open in a few hours

Oshawa This Week

DURHAM -- A 10 km stretch of Hwy. 401 westbound between Newtonville and Newcastle will be closed for several more hours as clean-up continues on a pile-up of up to 80 vehicles.
Three people were sent to Lakeridge Bowmanville in critical condition and another four patients, whose conditions were unknown, were sent to Lakeridge Oshawa, said Aaron Lazarus, senior director of communications for Lakeridge Health.
At 8 p.m. stranded motorists were being transported by bus to the nearby Newcastle Recreation Centre on Edward Street in Newcastle. Red Cross was on scene at the Centre to provide assistance.
OPP report eastbound lanes should open around 10:30 p.m. with westbound lanes re-opening by midnight or 1 am.
Shortly after the 3:30 p.m. accident, Kawartha EMS deputy chief Derek Brown tweeted that there was one life-threatening injury and several serious injuries, but “more wreckage than injuries”.
According to Mr. Lazarus, Lakeridge officials invoked an emergency procedure that saw officials going through the hospital department by department to ensure appropriate resources were available to handle incoming patients. Extra staff were called in to assist.
All westbound Hwy. 401 lanes were closed at Newtonville Road in Newcastle where traffic was diverted. Eastbound traffic was diverted at Hwy. 35/115. The snow and ensuing crash resulted in other local roads being jammed with rush-hour Friday traffic.
Ambulances from Durham Region, Northumberland County, Peterborough County, the City of Kawartha Lakes and Toronto were dispatched to the accident scene.

View more accident pics in the Photo Gallery
At the Newcastle Mill Street bridge, Metroland reporter Karen Longwell reported near white-out conditions, with people walking over the bridge to look at the accident scene or take pictures. She said some drivers were stuck in the crash, while others were out walking around.
What would normally take 10 minutes from Port Hope to Newtonville via Hwy. 401 took Ms. Longwell — who was the first reporter on the scene — a good hour to get there.
“it’s pretty chaotic,” Ms. Longwell said, who described cars facing every which way and into the ditch. “The entire highway is covered in snow.”
Ms. Longwell said at the front of the pileup, a jack-knifed trailer sits sprawled across all three lanes of traffic with what she described as a car “smashed underneath it.”
Although the snow is tapering off, visibility is still poor in the area, she said.
“It should take them hours to clean this up,” she added.
Newcastle resident Stan Zuly said he has “never seen anything this serious” before in the five years he has lived in the area.
Sid DeJong was sitting in his home near County Road 2 when he heard a lot of sirens outside.
He said traffic on County Road 2 was backed up as far as he could see and described whiteout conditions in the area around the time of the accident.
“I’ve never seen an accident this bad before,” Mr. DeJong said. “This is the biggest I’ve heard of. It’ll be hours before they clean this up.
Drivers were advised to exercise caution due to extremely poor visibility and accumulating snowfall. Snow squalls in the Pickering to Oshawa corridor moved east to the Port Hope area by evening.
Meanwhile, more than 50 trucks from the Region of Durham’s depots were loaded with salt and sent out to tackle the conditions.
“We made sure that all our trucks were fully loaded and fueled up and that we had enough people coming in to handle the workload, so we’re as ready as we can be,” said Uldis Siksna, the Region’s manager of maintenance operations.
Regional crews applied salt brine to a few of the roads prior to the snowfall to prevent the bonding of snow and ice to pavements. As the salt is applied to the road, brine is sprayed to speed up the process but Mr. Siksna said with the amount of snowfall, it was difficult to keep the roads bare and wet.
“I just saw a truck go by and put down some salt and 10 minutes later, it doesn’t look like anything has happened so the snow is coming down that quickly,” said Mr. Siksna.
“The only thing that’s really different this year is that this is the first real snow that we’ve had in a couple of years so all of a sudden, people are going to have to get used to (being mindful) of their driving habits.”
Drivers are cautioned to watch their speeds, leave plenty of room in front of them, and keep windshields as clear as possible.
“The main thing is for folks not to try to pass the plows and keep a safe distance,” said Mr. Siksna.
“We will have people on it during the storm and once it finally stops, we’ll do our final runs, put down our final salt and hopefully ... the roads will be eventually bare and wet but right now, it’s just the intensity of the snowstorm that’s making it more difficult.”